Trump v. Bismark: Two Veterans Of Tariff Wars

A look into the history of tariffs is surprisingly fascinating because the conventional wisdom surrounding tariffs appears to have turned on its head following the end of World War II. For weeks, the media and financial elite have sounded the alarm on how tariffs are always a negative force on financial growth, citing analyses from 1945 and beyond showing how tariffs were a net drag on the economies that employed them. But those same analyses will also show that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tariffs seemed to have the opposite effect and were a net positive, creating what is known as the tariff-growth paradox (or the Bairoch hypothesis).